It started in 1988.

It started with a trowel.

Bart Randolph’s career in the trades began in 1988, while attending vocational high school and studying masonry. At the same time, he began an apprenticeship in tile installation—putting a trowel in his hand both in the classroom and on actual jobsites.

What followed was decades of hands-on work. Tile installation became the foundation of his career, building an understanding of substrates, preparation, waterproofing, layout, drainage, transitions and the details that determine whether an installation performs long after the job is finished.

Over the years, that experience expanded into GFRC countertops, custom fabrication and increasingly specialized architectural work. Each discipline added another layer of knowledge—not just about how to create a finished surface, but how everything underneath it has to work together.

Eventually, that path led to microcement.

That background still shapes the company today. Bart understands what it means to solve problems in the field, work with imperfect conditions, meet a schedule, protect the work beneath the finish, and put his name behind the final result.

That experience became the foundation of Texcrete Designs.

Never satisfied with “good enough.”

Bart has never been particularly interested in doing something a certain way simply because that is how it has always been done.

When something works, he wants to understand why. When something fails, he wants to understand the cause. When a process is unnecessarily difficult, the next question is usually simple: is there a better way?

Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes it means changing a process. Sometimes it leads to a product that did not exist before.

Innovation was never the original business plan. It became the natural result of continually questioning, testing, and improving the work.

Building without a U.S. roadmap.

Microcement had a much deeper history in Europe than it did in the United States. But importing a product did not automatically import decades of local construction knowledge.

European construction methods, substrates, shower assemblies, and jobsite conditions can be different from what contractors encounter across the United States. There was no mature American knowledge base that answered every question Bart was facing in the field.

So he learned the hard way: through real projects, testing, experimentation, callbacks, successful installations, failures, conversations with manufacturers, and thousands of hours of hands-on work.

Every project added another piece to the system. How should the substrate be prepared? Where does waterproofing actually belong in the assembly? How should transitions be handled? What happens when movement is ignored? Which details matter most in a wet area?

Those lessons became far more valuable than any single finish technique.

Experience became Microcement US.

Once Bart had accumulated the knowledge he wished someone had been able to give him, keeping it to himself made little sense.

Microcement US was developed around a different training philosophy: teach the complete installation, not just the visible finish. Contractors work through preparation, reinforcement, waterproofing principles, application, finishing, sealing, shower construction, troubleshooting, estimating, and business realities.

The goal is not for someone to leave knowing how to make a sample board. The goal is for them to leave understanding enough of the complete system to make better decisions on a real jobsite—and to have continued access to Bart when questions come up afterward.

Experience became Microtex.

Training exposed the same challenges repeatedly. Installation work revealed them even more clearly. Certain parts of the job consumed time, introduced unnecessary variables, or depended too heavily on field fabrication.

That led to prototyping.

Shower trays. Benches. Curbs. Vanities. Custom forms. CNC-cut EPS components. Reinforcement details. Drain transitions. Shipping methods. Each idea started with the same question: can we make this easier for the installer without compromising the finished system?

Those prototypes became Microtex—a product line developed from the installer’s side of the problem.

Installer. Educator. Innovator. Manufacturer.

Those roles were not mapped out in advance. One led naturally to the next.

Installation created experience. Experience created knowledge. Knowledge created education. Repeated field problems created product ideas. Product ideas created manufacturing.

Today Texcrete Designs brings those pieces together under one company: Microtex products, Microcement US training, CimentArt materials, technical resources, and continued real-world application.

Texcrete still thinks like an installer because every product ultimately has to work for the person carrying it onto the jobsite and standing behind the finished result.